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Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Find the perfect audience for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching over one thousand literary magazines. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.

Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.

Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.

Download our free app to find readings and author events near you; explore indie bookstores, libraries, and other places of interest to writers; and connect with the literary community in your city or town.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.

Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.

Whether you are looking to meet up with fellow writers, agents, and editors, or trying to find the perfect environment to fuel your writing practice, the Conferences & Residencies is the essential resource for information about well over three hundred writing conferences, writers residencies, and literary festivals around the world.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

United States of Writing is an initiative to expand our core programs to better serve writers coast to coast. This year, we’re piloting United States of Writing in Detroit, Houston, and New Orleans with plans to expand in the coming years.

Discover historical sites, independent bookstores, literary archives, writing centers, and writers spaces in cities across the country using the Literary Places database—the best starting point for any literary journey, whether it’s for research or inspiration.

Take a guided tour of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, and many other cities. We asked authors, booksellers, publishers, editors, and others to share the places they go to connect with writers of the past, to the bars and cafés where today’s authors give readings, and to those sites that are most inspiring for writing.

Poets & Writers Live is an initiative developed in response to interviews and discussions with writers from all over the country. When we asked what Poets & Writers could do to support their writing practice, time and again writers expressed a desire for a more tangible connection to other writers. So, we came up with a living, breathing version of what Poets & Writers already offers: Poets & Writers Live.

Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Hear from the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine as they offer a behind-the-scenes preview of the new issue, talk with contributors and authors featured in the magazine, and discuss the lighter side of writing, publishing, and the literary arts in this decidedly DIY podcast.

The Time Is Now offers weekly writing prompts in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. Sign up to get The Time Is Now, as well as a weekly book recommendation for guidance and inspiration, delivered to your inbox.

Ads in Poets & Writers Magazine and on pw.org are the best ways to reach a readership of serious poets and literary prose writers. Our audience trusts our editorial content and looks to it, and to relevant advertising, for information and guidance.

Each year the Readings & Workshops program provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops. Learn more about this program, our special events, projects, and supporters, and how to contact us.

Organizations based in California, New York State, as well as in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Seattle, New Orleans, Tucson, and Washington D.C., are welcome to apply for support from the Readings & Workshops program for their literary events.

Presenters and writers who need to submit a report after a P&W-supported event can get started here. Reports help us demonstrate the value of the Readings & Workshops program to funders and help us continue to offer support to writers and organizations hosting literary events.

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May/June 2017

Our annual Writing Contests Issue features a close look at five awards programs with a focus on social justice, a special report on the future of arts funding under Trump, and nine authors on the life­­-changing support of NEA fellowships; plus an interview with Lidia Yuknavitch on her new dystopian novel, The Book of Joan; a close reading of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize jury letter about Gwendolyn Brooks; a Q&A with Parul Sehgal of the New York Times Book Review; Laura Maylene Walter on the writer’s quest for reassurance; agent advice; writing prompts; more than 100 contests with upcoming deadlines; and more.

Features

The Other Side of Burning

by Amy Gall

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In her new dystopian novel, The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch takes readers to a not-so-distant future, where the earth has been ravaged by war, a dictator has taken over, and humanity’s best hope for survival is a reimagined Joan of Arc.

Contests With Vision: Prizes With a Focus on Social Justice

by Dana Isokawa

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While many literary contests honor work for its innovative or formal qualities, these five organizations sponsor prizes for literature that engages with social and political issues, helping to promote a more just and equitable world.

The Aha! Moment: Kendra Kopelke and Mary Azrael of Passager Books

by Michael Bourne

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As part of a continuing series, Kendra Kopelke and Mary Azrael, coeditors of Passager Books, discuss how a short, quiet poem by eighty-year-old poet Jean Connor came to win the Passager Poetry Prize in 2001.

Radish, an innovative serial-reading app, publishes works of fiction one chapter at a time. Users can read original stories and pay to unlock more plot, putting money in the pockets of the writers who contribute.

Writer and artist Kristen Radtke’s debut graphic memoir, Imagine Wanting Only This, combines vivid illustrations with an unflinching investigation of loss, memory, and the construction and dissolution of the self.

Small Press Points highlights the innovation and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features the Tallahassee, Florida–based Twisted Road Publications, which champions authors overlooked by mainstream publishing and “books that depict the shadowy places where the disenfranchised dwell.”

Since its inception in 1987, the Writers Studio has grown from a small workshop in the West Village of New York City to an indispensable literary institution offering online courses, programming for children, and readings, craft classes, and workshops in five cities in the United States and abroad.

The Literary Life

The Time Is Now: Writing Prompts and Exercises

by Staff

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Compose a collaborative renga with a friend, inject surreal motifs into your fiction, and explore your relationship with a parent or child through the lens of one embarrassing memory—three prompts to keep your pen on the page this spring.